


Aftermath

by Thistlerose



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Connor visits the site of his father's last stand and bumps into Faith.  Written in 2004.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> While there's no character death _in this story_ , I wrote this very shortly after the series finale first aired. This was well before the comics series, so I assumed that Angel, Gunn, and Spike had died fighting the Senior Partners. (No idea what might have happened to Illyria.) Since I mostly ignore the comics, that's part of my head canon.

Her name was Faith. He had seen her before, fought with her -- against her and beside her. She belonged to the same shadowy region of his memory as his father. His real father. Angel.

He remembered the way she fought: fast as the crack of a whip, her words as cutting as her physical blows. Laid over that, flimsy as gauze, was another image of this girl: limp, drained of blood, her lowered eyelashes like bruises against her white cheeks.

She was kneeling now, on the dusty, dead earth, her leather pants creaking as she shifted slightly, her dark hair falling thick and tangled against her back. 

“So, this is where it went down,” she said. She had a low-pitched voice, and there was a lazy quality to it. It gave Connor shivers, though he did not realise that it was because her voice was very like his own.

“Yeah,” he said, coming up behind her. 

“All this…” She gestured with her chin. “It all used to be buildings.”

“Yeah,” Connor said. “When people found it like this -- afterward -- some of them thought they could build over it. But they couldn’t.”

“What is it, cursed or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Connor. “It just sucks up everything you try to plant on it. Roots, building foundations. Nothing takes. Stick something in this ground at night, it’ll be dust by morning. Doesn’t even soak up rain.”

“Fitting grave for a vampire, I guess. If he’s dead.”

“D’you really think he might still be alive? Not _alive_ , I mean, but…”

The girl shrugged. “Damned if I know. Buffy came back. Spike came back. But I think this might be different. Wesley’s dead.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Her voice did not change. He could not see her face. But he saw her touch the earth with her fingertips and she let them rest there for a long moment.

Then she rose and turned to him and the sun was at her back so he could not see her face clearly, but he thought she looked pale. “Need a lift anywhere?”

He almost said no, but suddenly he realised that he did not feel like walking back to the bus station. Not on a hot LA afternoon, when she had a motorcycle and a slim waist and it was just too damn quiet and peaceful here.

“Yeah, you can take me somewhere.”

“Anyplace special?” she asked over her shoulder as she straddled the bike and he climbed on behind her.

She smelled like smoke, he thought, and hot red dust, and sweat, and wind. “Anyplace special would be just fine.”

He couldn’t see if she grinned. Her voice rippled slightly as she said, “You got it.”

Then there was wind and dust and her hair in his face, and the roar of the engine all around them, cracking the dead air as they left the battlefield together.

 

They went to all the best clubs in the city, and in each one they toasted their fallen comrades. They ran out of clubs before they ran out of energy so, their bodies thrumming with music, neon lights, and alcohol, they climbed back onto the motorcycle and rode to the highway. Once there, Faith stopped and turned to Connor.

“Got your options, kid,” she said. “Canada’s north. Mexico’s south. Ocean’s west. Desert’s east. Home is…” She shrugged. “Where to?”

He tasted the ocean’s brine on his lips. The fire of the desert burned the back of his neck. His right hand froze; his left tingled with heat. All around them, LA glowed like a circuit board or like some sort of fungus. Night had fallen and he hadn’t even noticed it.

The ocean hid things, someone had told him once. It seemed cold, but there was life beneath the surface. “Been to the ocean,” he said. “Didn’t do anything for me.” 

“Desert?” said Faith. “Could work on our tans.”

“Wherever,” said Connor. “And don’t call me ‘kid’ again.”

She didn’t. And eventually they left LA far behind them. First, however, laughter came to them from the shadows, followed by seven humanoid figures. There was still enough light to see their knobbly foreheads and, when they opened their mouths, their fangs. 

“Looks like we caught ourselves a snack,” one said.

“How about this,” Faith drawled, leaning on the dashboard of her motorcycle, “we let you go, and you spend some quality time working on your lines? Because this is old.”

“Cute,” said another vampire. “But I don’t think we feel like waiting. Your champion and his flunkies are gone. No one’s going to hear your screams.”

“I don’t think we’re going to scream,” said Connor.

“Don’t think so,” Faith agreed, tossing her hair. “Think you’re forgetting one thing,” she said to the vampires that by now had them surrounded.

“Yeah?” said the apparent leader.

“Yeah,” said Connor lazily, shrugging. “ _We’re_ still here.”

05/20/04


End file.
